Ripoffs, Payoffs, Bizarre Plots -- Contra Capers Threaten Aid

WASHINGTON — Spend some time talking to current and former members of the U.S.-backed contra movement to oust Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista regime and you feel you've blundered into the pages of a badly plotted pulp novel.

CIA agents lugging around stacks of cash in suitcases and cardboard boxes. Alleged plots to assassinate foreign leaders, rival rebel leaders and even a U.S. ambassador. A scheme to conquer a Caribbean island and turn it into a tax shelter. A grocery store where they offer food in the aisles and military equipment in the back office.

The picture that emerges from interviews with more than a dozen past and present contras, American citizens close to them and U.S. officials is of a movement bogged down in bitter internecine power plays and a crisis of leadership.

The internal problems threaten to split the contras' fragile political base and belie President Reagan's portrayal of them as idealistic, democratic ''freedom fighters'' who are the ''moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.'' Leaders of the United Nicaraguan Opposition are meeting in Miami to try to keep their tenuous political umbrella group, through which all U.S. aid to the contras is funneled, from unraveling.

Such fantastic tales threaten to derail Reagan's $100 million contra aid proposal in Congress. Both houses are so alarmed that they have begun separate investigations.

On May 8 the House subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs subpoenaed records from 13 banks -- 11 in Miami -- involving various Central American brokers and suppliers of goods to the contras. Government auditors had complained that secrecy surrounding the spending of $27 million in non-lethal aid to the contras last year has made it impossible to fully account for $13 million.

Sources say the accounts subpoenaed include those of the Supermercado Hermano Pedro, a grocery store in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, that received nearly $4 million in U.S. contra aid payments between October and February.

The tiny market, which acts as a broker to supply contras with military equipment as well as food, is owned by Honduran politician Rodolfo Zelaya, who sources say has financial ties to his government's military.Contra sources said the arrangement was necessary to secure the Honduran military's cooperation in permitting the contras to use Honduras as a sanctuary. Honduras officially denies the contras permission to use its territory.

Financing a guerrilla war, however, often deviates from standard accounting practices.

Edgar Chamorro, a former contra leader now critical of the current rebel leadership, said he recalled CIA agents in Honduras carting around bundles of cash in suitcases and cardboard boxes.

The money was handed out based on the number of troops contra commanders said they had on their rolls, Chamorro said. This often involved haggling, because the CIA suspected contra commanders were inflating their rosters and pocketing some of the U.S. aid.

U.S. investigators will try to determine whether some contras have sold U.S. dollars for a premium on the black market, either pocketing the extra cash or using it for illegal purposes.

Congressional investigators also are looking into finances and military supplies handled by Mario Calero, the brother of Adolfo Calero, one of three leaders of UNO and head of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, known by its Spanish abbreviation FDN. It is the largest contra army.

Mario Calero is the FDN supply chief in New Orleans, where millions of dollars in both private and U.S. government-subsidized goods and supplies are stored for shipment to the contras.

Adolfo Calero denied any wrongdoing by FDN officials, particularly by his brother, and said he welcomes ''any investigation, any audit.''

''Over the past few months, my office has engaged in an investigation of alleged drug smuggling, gun running, Neutrality Act violations and other equally, if not more serious, offenses,'' said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a contra aid opponent. ''To date we have received substantial corroboration of these activities, some of which shock the conscience.''

The Justice Department on May 8 said it had found no evidence of contra wrongdoing, but still was looking into possibly illegal activities of supporters based in the United States. Last week Justice officials asked to see Kerry's evidence.

Contra opponents have been making ''shocking'' allegations against the anti-Sandinista rebels for years. Most of the recent charges, however, come from those who say they support the contras' ultimate political goal but are disillusioned with corruption, bickering and mismanagement.